male is about to lay eggs (which occurs but once each year, 
generally in the month of June), she makes a little web and 
deposits the eggs upon it (from 200 to 500), then covers 
them with silk, making a cocoon in which the young remain 
some time after they are hatched. The wolf-spiders carry 
the cocoons of eggs about with them, held by their spin¬ 
nerets. Other spiders fasten their cocoons in various places. 
Some stay by them until the young are hatched, in order to 
bite open the cocoon so that the young may escape. Others 
forsake the cocoon at once, leaving the young to get out 
themselves. They often devour each other before they can 
escape from their prison. 
When the young are released, they moult, casting off the 
skin, and spin a little web in which they live in common for 
awhile. The young of running spiders get on the backs of 
their mothers and are carried about for some time. Spiders 
moult frequently during their growth. In one case, a spider 
that lived several years moulted nine times. Many kinds of 
spiders live only one year, others requiring two years to com¬ 
plete their growth. 
The cobwebs are made in a variety of ways, sometimes 
without any regular shape or design, something like an en¬ 
tanglement about a branch, or 
in the corner of a room. Some¬ 
times there is an attachment 
of a cylindrical hall-way, reced¬ 
ing into a dark crevice, in which 
the spider conceals itself. Some 
spiders dig burrows in the 
ground, lining them thickly with 
cobweb and, in the case of 
the trap-door spiders, protect¬ 
ing the entrance by a neat- 
fitting lid * that works nicely 
upon a hinge of web. 
The nest which is most at¬ 
tractive and interesting to US Fi e .20. Web of common garden spider, 
is that made by the common garden spider by running the 
threads to a common center in a single plane, like the spokes 
of a wheel. (See Fig. 20.) After this frame-work is 
constructed, the spider begins at the center and fastens a 
7 
